


Underneath This Hood, I Tick Like A Bomb

by SBG



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Angst, Internalized Homophobia, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-21
Updated: 2012-12-21
Packaged: 2017-11-21 20:39:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/601841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SBG/pseuds/SBG
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve has spent his whole life being the person he thought he had to be; with Danny's help, maybe one day he will be the person he <i>is</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Underneath This Hood, I Tick Like A Bomb

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Huntress69](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Huntress69/gifts).



> Written for the [H50 Holiday Swap](http://h50-holidayswap.livejournal.com/) over on LJ, gifted to [Huntress69](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Huntress69/pseuds/Huntress69). It wouldn't be what it is without the help of [annieke](http://archiveofourown.org/users/annieke) and [LdyAnne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LdyAnne).
> 
> Title inspired by a lyric found in the song _Hood_ by Perfume Genius.

Steve didn’t mean to stare, but he could not keep his eyes from tracking Danny’s every move. He’d tried to stop all day, hand to heart, he had. It wasn’t Detective Danny Williams he was looking at, not really. The overlay of images of Danny doing completely different things from what he did every day when he was on duty were all he could see and it was the Danny he didn’t know that he couldn’t stop seeing. His partner could be interviewing a witness, and what Steve would see was hands holding tight onto naked skin. It was not his business what Danny did when he was not working, but the ghosts of what he’d witnessed would not leave him be. Over and over he saw these things, and each time rocked him to the core. Steve glanced away from Danny, at the blank report form in front of him on the desk and, again, it wasn’t that he truly saw. Those hands, that mouth. Doing things.

He wasn’t a … it wasn’t like this was an actual issue for him. That was a lie, of course, and he knew that too. The way he could not let Danny talk to him about the sudden elephant in the room or anything else even non-elephant related and also the way he was completely unable to let it go clued him in that, yes, it was a very big deal. He didn’t _want_ it to be an issue. He never wanted it to be, but it was and had been something buried so deep inside himself for as long as he could remember he didn’t know how to separate himself from it. 

Steve knew the second Danny’s studious attempts to ignore him snapped. Danny’s shoulders, stiff all day, slumped slightly all of a sudden as he caught Steve out for the hundredth time, then ratcheted back up into a harsh, angry line a millisecond later. The subtle move only pulled more images into his brain, not all of them real memories but fantasies he could never admit to having. Didn’t know how to admit. 

He closed his eyes, but that didn’t ward off the pictures. It only made them clearer, as if he were back there again that very moment. He mentally counted the steps it would take Danny to get from his own office to Steve’s. He factored in the increased speed due to anger and knew it was coming, but jumped slightly and opened his eyes when Danny slapped his hand against the door and barged into his office. With those shoulders high and tight and fists clenched at his sides, Danny looked like everything that scared Steve spitless. He looked like violent recrimination. 

“Are we ever going to talk about this? Fuck, no, I don’t care if we talk now. You’ve had all weekend and all day today, and it’s got nothing to do with the job I do here. Are we going to have a problem?” Danny said. No preamble, no easing into the conversation and absolutely no shrinking from his rage. “Because I’ve gotta say you’ve acted like an asshole all day.”

“Danny,” Steve said, and if he choked on the name and sounded pathetic, well, he was.

“I really didn’t peg you for one of those career military, you-ain’t-a-man-unless-you-only-like-pussy, homophobic fucker types, so color me surprised at the way you’ve looked at me like I was a wad of chewed up gum on the bottom of your shoe today. The way you’re looking at me _now_. Jesus. The timing can’t be coincidental.” Danny started pacing a controlled line, arms still unnaturally stiff by his sides. “Congratulations, you fooled me. I thought you weren’t like that. I thought we were … damn it, I thought wrong. I’m always thinking wrong about people.”

Danny unlocked his right arm to run a hand through his carefully slicked hair, once, twice. Beneath the spots of color on his cheekbones, he looked pale and the lines around his eyes were deep grooves and didn’t look like they’d ever been created from laughter. Standing there terrible and angry, Danny didn’t look like he’d seen a day of joy in his life.

“If this is how it’s going to be from now on, I don’t know if this is the right place for me anymore. I have spent too much of my life living with bullshit like this.”

Steve’s heart pounded. The very last thing he wanted was for Danny to feel this way. He was just … he didn’t know what to do with the emotions that were moving through him like Sherman’s march through the south, razing and burning everything in their wake. It wasn’t Danny’s fault. Deep down, he knew it wasn’t even Danny he was struggling with. It could never be. He gazed at his partner, unblinking and unable to get his mouth to say the things Danny needed to hear. He saw Chin and Lori both out there, trying not to look like they were looking. The words stalled in his throat. 

“I want to fucking punch you in the face right now, you have no idea,” Danny said almost gently, after a good long stare right back into Steve’s gawping face.

Danny didn’t make good on the threat, though. He balled his fists tight, spun around and headed for the exit at a fast clip.

And Steve sat there and let him go.

_The door was locked but the lights were on, so Steve knew Danny had to be in there. The Camaro was also parked out front, but he’d been there a few minutes and his knocks yielded no answer. He figured that meant Danny was in the shower, had needed to rinse off after a long, hot day at the end of a long, hot week. Rather than wait outside and draw curious gazes from nosy, probably criminal neighbors, Steve used the key Danny had given him to his new place. If he’d thought the apartment he’d first found Danny living in when they’d met was bad, this was a definite step down. He wrinkled his nose in distaste at the musty smell and dilapidated furniture, then felt immediately guilty. He could hear Danny’s voice bemoaning the fact that not everyone could afford oceanfront property._

_Steve never had it in him to remind Danny just how he had come into possession of his childhood home. Danny wasn’t ranting at him, it was just a general malingering cog in his own significant wheel of personal problems._

_Danny had been down lately, understandably. Everyone knew why. Steve wanted to help his friend, drag him out to a bar for a few beers and a few laughs. He knew Danny didn’t have Grace this weekend and hell, they could both use a bit of R and R. His hand went unconsciously to his left side, where the stab wound was still tender enough to remind him it was there if he moved the wrong way. Danny didn’t carry his wounds physically, but they bled just the same._

_Standing stock still in the middle of the tiny living area, Steve furrowed his eyebrows. Something felt wrong. He couldn’t say there was anything to point him to that assumption. Danny was not the world’s neatest person. If the place had been ransacked, Steve would never know it by looking. No, it was … and then he heard two things at once. The silence coming from the bathroom, no shower sounds, and a guttural groan from the bedroom._

_He didn’t think. There wasn’t room for any thought beyond the implication Danny might be hurt, somehow, or sick. Steve raced toward the closed door, heart in his throat and hand itching for a weapon, in case there really had been a home invasion and the perp was still there._

_It wasn’t until he opened the door and stood on the threshold, eyes locked on Danny in the bed with another person beneath him, that Steve considered the other valid, obvious reasons that sound would emanate from a bedroom. He was rooted to the spot at the sight of Danny thrusting deeply into a very male ass, hands clamped so tightly on the guy’s hips that the tat at the crux of his thumb and index finger stood out in stark relief against the pale, taut skin. His attention transferred to Danny’s sheathed cock, as it rocked in and out. He went unnoticed for several moments, all the while his head screaming for him to move._

_Then the guy shifted onto his elbows, turned his head toward the door and screamed, “Holy what the fuck?”_

_Steve backed out of the doorway at that, slammed up against the narrow corridor’s wall. It was only then Danny halted and looked right at him, face flushed from exertion. Danny cursed as well then, and pulled out roughly enough the stranger in his bed emitted a loud whine of discomfort. Steve stared at Danny’s cock, didn’t dare look up as Danny lunged for the sheet to cover himself._

_He bolted. He had to … this was not … he had no idea how to process any of the million things going through his mind, all of them culminating to a damning chorus of ‘Danny is a fag’ alongside a reawakened urge he had spent a lifetime pretending wasn’t there, a year of pretending more strenuously than ever. He was at his truck when he heard Danny call out his name, but there was no way in hell he could stop running now and no way he could look at his partner the same way ever again._

“You’re fixing this,” Chin said. “I don’t know what’s going on between you and Danny and I don’t care. It shouldn’t be my business, except that whatever it is, it’s clearly impacting your ability to work together. It hasn’t been that long since the last time you did something to get Danny this riled, _brah_.”

Chin stood at Steve’s office door, implacable with his arms crossed and stubborn set to his jaw. His dark eyes glittered. The only other tell of his extreme emotion was the way his jaw muscles ticked, as if he were only barely containing the worst of what was inside him.

Steve stared, helpless to look away from Chin any more than he’d been able to tear his eyes off of Danny’s angry face. He was stuck in this strange, nebulous place that he knew and seemed to be the one thing he was unable to escape no matter how hard he tried. He hadn’t been in this place for so long, yet at the same time it felt as if he’d never gotten out of it. He was fifteen again. He was twenty-three. He was all of the awful moments of his life, and all of those moments surrounded him, tore away the sure, strong person he’d carefully built himself to be. He wasn’t made of steel, but fragile tissue paper, and everyone would see it now. Everyone would tear at him and shred him to pieces. It was only a matter of time.

“We’ve got the governor’s watchdog on us and you can bet she’s cataloging our every move. Now is not the time for this kind of rift.” Chin jutted his head toward where Lori must be. “We’ve gone through too much, with Kono cut off from us and … we’re not losing Danny too. I don’t care how you do it, but fix it, Steve.”

The expression on Chin’s face was one of stony resolve and to Steve it seemed to border on hate. He wondered if that was what he had looked like to Danny all day, and knew that it was. It was the same expression he’d seen reflected in every mirror and glass surface since he’d discovered Danny wasn’t the person Steve thought he was. That feeling in the pit of his stomach, cold nausea and fear, seemed to tighten like a fist. He understood that hate too well, never thought it would be turned on him again. He’d taken pains to keep that from happening, but Chin’s eyes were hard, impenetrable. He drew a shaky breath and nodded, just to get Chin out of his office and silence the deafening unspoken censure.

For a moment it didn’t look like Chin was going anywhere without some kind of verbal commitment and Steve wanted to give it to him. He wanted to promise that to himself, but he had never dealt and never fixed. He had run. He let out a loud breath when Chin finally nodded once and left him alone. 

All of a sudden, though, the walls of his office seemed too transparent, as if they hadn’t always been made of glass. He couldn’t breathe with how much closer they seemed, the room getting smaller and smaller the longer he sat in it. Danny’s angry words now replayed in his brain right along with the flashes of skin and cock and want and need and he had to get out, get out. He ignored the stares he was sure Chin and Lori pinned onto the middle of his back as he ran, tried to elude something that had him beat by miles already. Running would take him nowhere.

He drove with no plan, no direction, had no destination except Away. Out. 

He drove and drove with the ocean on his left and the roar of something else entirely in his ears. Danny hated him. Chin wanted him to fix it. Danny didn’t even know but _hated him_ anyway. Steve had no fucking clue how to fix something that had been broken long ago. This injury he carried, the kind that bled where he thought only he could see it (like Danny’s wounds), he’d absorbed as part of himself. It had shaped him as surely as losing his mother and now his father had. He’d grown a protective skin to cover it but after all these years it remained something too easily ripped open again. 

The phone vibrating yanked him out of his unfocused driving. Steve glanced at the screen, aware that his current problems didn’t negate the responsibilities of his job. Hell, his whole life had been predicated around the idea of school, football, duty, job, all first. Everything first. He saw it was Danny calling and didn’t answer. He’d been intent on driving carefully, but hadn’t been paying attention where he was going. He took stock of his surroundings. He’d driven the H–1 so far west he realized it had turned into Farrington and he was nearly at the end of it. 

When he was a kid, he’d come up here to Keawaula a handful of times with friends and … he locked those memories down tight. He shouldn’t stay here, not like this. The draw of the water was as strong as the lure to drive and not look back, though, and that beat out the unsettled feeling in his gut. As he steered into the car park, the phone went off again. It was Danny, again. Steve parked and stared at the phone until it stopped buzzing, then stuck it in a pocket and threw himself out of the cab. He ripped at the bottom of his shirt to tug it off. He moved mechanically, removing more clothing as he walked faster and faster toward the rough, choppy water. It was too close to winter for good swim water out here. He knew it was dangerous and stupid for an average person, but he was SEAL trained. 

Besides, he needed dangerous and stupid. He needed the vast welcome of the deep, dark ocean, where there was no voices, no angry looks or disgust, and no expectations barring the ever present, silent challenge of the ocean to stay afloat, stay alive in its beautiful but treacherous depths. While the sun was closer to the horizon, it wouldn’t set for another hour or so. He had time. Oblivious to anyone else who might be on the beach, Steve had stripped down to his skivvies by the time he hit the water at a dead run. 

He swam straight out until his arms were sore and the strong current became difficult to battle. 

He turned and swam back slowly, muscles taxed and brain numbed. It was exactly what he’d wanted to accomplish. And when he fairly crawled onto shore, he didn’t do much more than lie there in a heap for several minutes, the sun’s rays not helping much to dry him off or warm him up so late in the day. Sand got everywhere and eventually made him move again, but only to sit and pull his cargo pants closer. The buzz of his phone was persistent and he pulled it out. He had five missed calls and one message. Steve sighed and ran a sandy hand down his face, the grit of it seeming sharper than it should. He accessed his voicemail and was not surprised at whose voice he heard. 

_“So, it’s been brought to my attention that I can and sometimes do react in a very brash manner when I feel threatened. Okay, fine, that isn’t what was said. What was said is that sometimes I’m an asshole. I’m an asshole, all right? But so are you. You seriously are, and I get it. I get that I … what you saw must have shocked you, but I wish you’d…”_ Danny said. He heaved a sigh, frustration coming through clear as day. _“Looks like I do want to talk about this, even though, no, I don’t. We can’t not talk about this, Steve, do you see that? Not if either of us wants to get past it. I want to get past it, and that doesn’t mean I’m going to beat your face in, though if I’m going to be one hundred percent honest a part of me still wants to do that more than I want to talk. Listen to me, I’m rambling. I think I know what … no, just call me. Please.”_

After Danny’s voicemail cut off, Steve pressed the phone against his forehead and closed his eyes. He almost wanted to smile at the wordy message and the lack of ire in it, but could only let out a strange choked sound and was immediately ashamed of his weakness. It made him want to run. He no longer had anywhere to go, could no sooner return to active duty than he could have swum until he couldn’t see land and then kept on forever. He had a home here. He had family, but maybe, maybe he wouldn’t soon and that was incomprehensible to consider. Jesus, he couldn’t turn his brain off for more than two hours. He pulled the phone back and stared at his reflection in the glossy black screen, horrified at what he saw now and wondered automatically what name his partner would give his expression. 

Danny. It was Danny with all his tenaciousness that wasn’t going to allow him to escape the way he usually did, even if he had nowhere physically to go. This was something he should have known from the start. Part of him had, he realized, which was exactly why he’d shut down and run. He should put his clothes on and leave here, go somewhere, anywhere else. He didn’t have the energy yet, which was odd since he’d swum further and longer before. The wet boxer briefs clung to him, revealed more than was altogether appropriate, and he remembered belatedly that he was on public land. 

Steve curled his legs into an inverted V, rested his forearms on his knees and brought his head down. Huddled into as small a space as he could, he tried to be as inoffensive as possible while he pulled himself together enough to drive. He tried to parse what it was about seeing Danny like that, naked and sure, that had sent him spiraling like he hadn’t in over half his lifetime. 

He didn’t hear someone approach until the crunch of footfalls also came with grains of sand spattering across his lower back. He was embarrassed at how far off his game he was. Steve didn’t look up, didn’t move, but readied himself to react if and when necessary. The person let out a sigh and he knew who it was only from that sound alone. Of course it was Danny, who couldn’t get away from him fast enough before and yet was the one to launch his own search and rescue mission. It turned out Danny was a walking contradiction, far more so than he’d ever considered. He should have known that a surface view of his partner was not accurate. Surface views rarely were.

Steve closed his eyes, saw Danny fucking into that stranger again. 

Danny, the actual, live Danny, sat at his right, still not uttering a word except a grumbled half-grunt as he got situated on the sand. They sat that way for a long while, Steve with his head buried and Danny uncharacteristically silent. Given the way they’d ended things a few short hours ago, he supposed the silence was a blessing. The sound of the surf hitting the shore was an almost soothing backdrop for the awkward quiet. Danny was so near he could feel the heat from his body, and had to struggle not to pull away. Or lean closer.

“Jesus, look at you,” Danny said at last, then, “I called.”

Steve lifted his head slightly. He nodded once, but kept his eyes pinned to the ocean. He could still see Danny in his peripheral vision, and his partner had his attention set to the water as well. 

“Look, I am not going to apologize for who I am.” Danny took a deep breath. “It’s never been a secret, but it’s not something I advertise, either. I have had too many negative reactions … I just never thought you’d be one of them and it threw me. I got angry, but then I started cooling down. And thinking.”

Danny lost his words then, emotion cropping them off at the throat. Steve ventured a peek at him, watched Danny pick up a handful of sand and let it sift through his fingers. He didn’t say anything. He couldn’t. If he did and if Danny found out about him, it would be over. He couldn’t take that. 

“Danny.”

Steve cleared his tight throat and all he wanted was to apologize and tell Danny it wasn’t about him and that he was _sorry_ , that Danny was collateral damage in a war that had little to do with him. Danny was the spark, but Steve was the bomb.

“The first time I had sex was on this beach,” Steve said. He winced, at the memory and for saying those words. Once he said that, he had to say more and he did not want to. Not to anyone, but most especially not to Danny, who somehow drew things out of him despite all of his best intentions. He gestured. “Right over there.”

“Oh?” Danny said, confusion clear.

“I was fifteen and stupid … and, god, I thought he was perfect. Sixteen, on the swim team and so beautiful.” Steve pressed his forehead against his knees, wrapped his arms around his legs and pulled himself into a tighter ball. “His name was Yon. Yon Park. He let me…” 

Danny’s hand on his arm made him jump, and he looked up. He always had to respond to Danny. What he saw in Danny’s expression now wasn’t anger. It wasn’t reproach. It was understanding, and in many ways that was worse. Steve took a shaky breath and shook his head. Danny couldn’t know.

_The commotion in the locker room was obvious from several feet away from the door. Steve ran in, curiosity piqued and instinct to keep others in line powering his movements. He saw a crowd gathered in a circle. He couldn’t see their victim, but he recognized what was going on even without the physical sighting. The boys were jeering and swearing, with all of their attention aimed down and at the center of the circle. He was a jock, but he wasn’t an asshole like some of his teammates. The bullies were a mix of varsity and junior varsity players, all football._

_“Hey,” he shouted. “What’s going on?”_

_He shoved his way through the crowd and saw glimpses of bare skin, shaking shoulders and the red marks of bruises already forming. He pushed against Junior Newalu to get a better view, and got thrust aside for his troubles, buffeted around against several guys until one of them grabbed him and held him up. Frazzled somewhat, he glanced around at the sheer hate coloring all of their faces, the derision. Something in his gut started to ache, a sense of foreboding coming over him. This wasn’t regular hazing. He knew it as sure as he knew anything, and he darted a glance toward the coach’s office. It was empty. Of course it was. He turned back, started to crouch down next to the injured boy, who was huddled so tight into a ball it was impossible to tell who it was. Small, broad shoulders, trim waist._

_“Knock it off, guys. Come on. Leave him alone.”_

_Steve’s voice of reason was ignored. He cringed when a vicious kick landed against the victim’s hamstring and he cried out. He stood and tried to drive back the guys closest to him, tried to find one other person among them who knew this was wrong._

_“Fag. Fucking mahu,” Junior said._

_Steve froze, as if ice suddenly flowed through his veins. Tension tightened his shoulders and that bad feeling in his gut amped up. He thought he was going to puke._

_“Look at the faggot, McGarrett. We can’t let him think he can walk around watching us get naked. Damned pervert.”_

_As relieved as he was that Junior wasn’t talking about him, that feeling didn’t go away. He spun around and finally saw who they were all beating on. He almost gasped, but held it in as Yon shifted and looked up at him, dark eyes watery with pain and fear and oh shit. Yonnie. His dark hair, shorn on the sides but floppy and long on top – he refused to give up his style to reduce surface drag, he always said, preferred to wear an ugly cap for a few hours. That stupid hair obscured most of his eyes at the moment, but Steve could still see the stark fear and anxiety in them. He wanted to fall to his knees and crawl toward the other boy, the boy he thought maybe he loved._

_“Steve,” Yon whispered. “Steve.”_

_Steve reached a hand, halted in terror when Junior said, “Oh, look, we’ve got another one.”_

_That was when the rest of the guys started heckling him, accusing him of being gay and threatening to inflict this ‘justice’ on him if he didn’t prove he wasn’t. The room closed in on him. He couldn’t breathe and couldn’t move and Yon pleaded with him without words, eyes boring into him and something in him shifted. Self-preservation. Cowardice. He couldn’t be that. No, he couldn’t end up bruised and bloodied and shunned for being who he was. He wasn’t. He wasn’t._

_“No,” Steve said._

_He raised his right foot and Yon whimpered._

“We all ran when we heard the coaches coming. And after that, Yon just went away. Transferred out, I dunno. I never saw him again and I _loved_ him. Danny, I loved him,” Steve said, his breathing harsh and too loud in his ears. “And I knew then that I could never be like that, be like him. I couldn’t allow myself to be.”

Danny didn’t say anything and the silence was not only awkward, but damning as well. Steve fumbled for his cargos, disregarded the scrape of sand on his legs as he tried to put the pants on. He couldn’t seem to get his hands to work.

“Stop,” Danny murmured and placed his hands on top of Steve’s shaking ones. “Just stop for a minute.”

“I can’t.”

“Oh, babe.” Danny yanked the cargos away, held onto them tightly. “You were fifteen, confused and terrified. Those aren’t excuses, just facts.”

“Danny, I can’t,” Steve said. _My whole life is a lie._

“You’re wrong. You can. You’re not fifteen anymore and you’re not alone. You have to stop eventually.”

Steve realized his hands weren’t the only part of him shaking. He was wracked in an all-over shiver and couldn’t get that under control either. For a minute or two, Danny just sat there with him, waited him out and the urge to lean close overrode the need to get away. He slumped into Danny and wasn’t surprised at the way his partner instantly wrapped an arm around his shoulder. 

“I won’t pretend that my story and yours are anything alike, but I think I can understand a little more than the average bear. I wish someone had been there for you. You need to know something now that you should have been told a long time ago. It should have been drummed into your head instead of what you got, what you turned to for structure and guidance instead,” Danny said quietly, he shifted until they were both half facing each other. He tipped Steve’s chin up and laid a hand on his heart. “Whoever you are in here, you’re not broken. You never were. Please try to believe me when I say that.”

Danny’s eyes were so blue in the fading light, their natural pale color enhanced by emotion, that Steve couldn’t look away. He saw no trace of the things that he expected. No loathing, no hate, no disgust, none of the things he’d felt about himself aimed back at him on Danny’s face. The relief he experienced was immense, and it intertwined with his exhaustion. All of those emotions that had plagued him all day swirled into a heady mix he again found himself unable to process and didn’t know what to do with. 

Before Steve realized he was doing it, he lunged toward Danny and pressed himself close as if he could crawl into Danny’s skin with him. It was a dam breaking wide. Those things that had jolted through him the moment he saw Danny was not so different from him, it all distilled into something else entirely. He knew it wasn’t quite right even as he felt it, but he couldn’t stop it. His emotions were a juggernaut. 

Danny meant it, every word. Danny had only been angry because he hadn’t known and now he knew and it was okay. Danny didn’t hate him for being the way he was, or for denying it. Danny’s arms wrapped around him and it was so good to just feel that for a moment. 

His body ran on instinct, the urges he’d had for so long finally made sense. He nuzzled against Danny’s neck, the sting of stubble a shock against his cheek. Steve shifted closer still, suddenly aware of how few clothes he had on and how many Danny did. He captured Danny’s mouth and kissed hard, desperate for it in a way he hadn’t been for so long. His hand slid toward the buttons on the ridiculous shirt Danny always chose to wear. For a second, a beautiful blip, he was sure Danny softened against him, kissed him back.

But it ended there, if had happened anywhere outside of his imagination. Danny let go of him and pushed at his chest firmly, turned his face to the side with a soft, frustrated sound. Familiar ice froze through his veins. Steve recoiled, lost his balance and half sprawled on the wet sand. He was painfully aware and dismayed that he’d just gone from full on homophobic freak-out to a serious need to get in Danny’s pants. His nakedness now embarrassed him. He sat and wrestled with his cargo pants once more. 

“Hey, hey,” Danny said, stilling his hands. “Hey. It’s okay. Steve.”

“Jesus fuck, Danny, I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Steve said, and he sounded off to his own ears. Danny’s hands were warm on his, small but sure and strong.

“It’s called twenty-odd years of self-loathing and repression. Look it up in _Psychology Today_ if you think I’m making it up.” Danny released Steve’s hands only when he seemed convinced he wasn’t a flight risk. He cupped one against the side of Steve’s face, thumb rubbing against his cheekbone. “Listen to me and answer me this – have I ever lied to you? Ever?”

“No.” That was one of the few things Steve knew without a doubt, where the rest of his world was in tumult, Danny was consistent to how Steve knew him, in his words and actions. Asshole or savior, Danny was both. “No, you haven’t. God, I’m so sorry, Danny, none of this was about you. I shouldn’t have…”

Steve trailed off, certain he’d just screwed up even worse, and that Danny would run and stay away this time.

“No, you shouldn’t have, but this is not a no.” Danny’s hand transferred to his forehead, where his fingers traced worry lines. They’d always touched each other freely and this wasn’t so different, only it was. “This is a not now. You, my friend, are a fixer-upper, but so much about you and the vibe I thought I was getting makes sense now. I think you might be worth the work.”

Danny’s eyes were still dark with as many emotions as Steve struggled with himself. But he winked and Steve laughed somewhat manically in reaction. The fuse that had been lit on Friday snuffed out, smoldered instead of flamed. Danny had done that, he thought, disarmed him before he could explode. Danny was always doing that. He wanted to believe everything his partner told him; he wasn’t sure how. 

“I can see we have a long way to go,” Danny said, tilting his head and looking at him with a new light in his expression. “The first step is getting you to accept that you are not broken, not when it comes to this. Not where it’s most _important_.”

Danny scrambled to his feet and held a hand out to him. Steve took it and let himself be pulled up; Danny’s strength showed in more than one way tonight.

“Put some clothes on, you Neanderthal.” Danny gave him a long, steady once over. “Where do you think you are? Rio?”

Steve followed Danny back to the car park, putting back on what he’d stripped off before. He thought maybe with Danny’s help, he might be okay someday. At the very least he had to try, because he had a sneaking suspicion that it was Danny who would be worth the work.


End file.
